Intersections: an interdisciplinary approach to media, identity, and place

This paper explores ongoing projects and research focused on themes of media, community, identity, and place in Sydney's westem suburbs. Fairfield is promoted as Australia's most culturally diverse local-Govermment area. Many community organisations and the local Council are involved in cultural productions that aim to both challenge the misrepresentations of mainstream media and to provide positive self-representations. My research examines media representations as a cultural resource for identity construction and for negotiations of community and place. My approach draws on media studies, cultural studies, geography, and sociology to conceptualise Fairfield as the site of as ymbolic struggle to define the area and its residents. I argue that such an interdisciplinmy approach is necessary to foreground questions of power in any analysis of media and identity construction.